The Federal Trade Commission recently announced changes to the CAN-SPAM act. The CAN-SPAM act was first signed into law in 2003 by President Bush. This law imposed a series of requirements that marketers were to follow in order for their email to NOT be considered spam. At the same time, this law gave Federal civil and Criminal enforcement authorities new tools to combat commercial email that is unwanted (a.k.a. ’spam’.)
I ask you the question, “Do you spam your customers?” for a simple reason. Are you aware of the CAN-SPAM act and the requirements you are supposed to follow when you send out an email marketing campaign?
This list is a brief summary of the CAN-SPAM act and also discusses the new changes that just passed into law. (For those of you who want to read the full 109 page download, go to FTC website.)
Requirements of the CAN-SPAM act:
1. You cannot mislead or contain false “header” or From line information. — This is more specific to where the message is being sent from. When you view an email header, there is a more advanced view that allows you to really dig in to where the message originated from. This is in respects to that header, along with just blatantly misleading and saying your email is from some other person or company.
2. You cannot mislead or contain false information in the email Subject line.
3. You are required to insure that your email contain a functioning email address or similar Internet based opt-out method — in order for your customers to easily be able to stop your email communication if they so choose.
4. Prohibits you from sending a commercial email to an opt-out recipient more than 10 days after they opted out. — Meaning, once they opt-out, there is a 10 day grace period for you to remove them. If you send to them after that 10 day grace period, you are in violation of the CAN-SPAM act.
5. You are required to disclose in your commercial emailing the following three disclosures:
- Make a clear and conspicuous identification of the email as an advertisement or solicitation.
- Make it clear and conspicuous as to how to be removed from your emailings via an opt-out or unsubscribe.
- You must provide a valid physical postal address as a sender of the email. (One of the recent changes that just implemented into law is the ability for you to use a P.O. Box. Originally, this was not included, but now you can use a P.O. Box as your valid, physical address when sending email messages.)
6. The Act authorizes the Commission to enforce violations of the Act in the same manner as an FTC trade regulation rule. – Basically this authorized Attorney Generals of States to enforce the law.
Some of the changes that have recently been implemented are:
1. During the Opt-out process, you must use a one-click method. You cannot require anything other than the email address.
2. You cannot require comments or reasons why, nor can you require a fee based opt-out method. Basically, make it a simple one step process to unsubscribe and do not require any additional information to unsubscribe other than the email address of the recipient, without any fees associated with the opt-out.
3. P.O. Boxes are accepted as valid physical postal addresses of the sender.
4. Can-Spam applies to businesses as well as individuals by defining a ‘person’.
5. For Commercial emails that are sponsored, written by or originated from multiple companies, the CAN-SPAM act now makes it more clear that ONE company is designated as the sender and has full responsibility to remove an email address.
Email marketing is an important part of any business. But before you send your next email marketing message, please insure that you follow the CAN-SPAM act requirements. Or your company could be in jeopardy of violating the Federal CAN-SPAM Act.
